A temporary unofficial settlement outpost near the lower Galilee will become a full-fledged Jewish town, a Haifa-area Interior Ministry planning committee announced today.
Originally known as Mitzpeh I’ron, its official name is Mitzpeh Ilan, named for fallen astronaut-pilot Ilan Ramon.
Located just north of the Samaria region, in the eastern Sharon, the community was first founded in 2005, and is populated by 44 families – all living in caravans or simple pre-fab housing. Due to the new decision, however, permanent construction will be allowed, and the town is slated to grow to 350 families.
“All of the founding families arrived on their own, without really knowing each other in advance,” one long-time resident told Israel National News. Asked if their common goal was “to build a new town in Israel, but not in Judea and Samaria,” she answered in the affirmative, but then qualified: “It wasn’t really ‘not Judea and Samaria,’ but rather to populate this specific area of Wadi Ara (Nachal I’ron) with Jews.”
Wadi Ara is located along the Hadera-Afula highway, and large Israeli-Arabs towns such as Umm el-Fahm threaten to overtake small local Jewish communities such as Mei-Ami. On the other hand, a new hareidi-religious city for tens of thousands of Jews is planned for the area, to be built in what is now the small town of Harish.
The new town and its hundreds of new housing units will be built, the decision states, “in accordance with the unique topographical and scenic conditions, as well as the environmental limitations, such as the Narbeta Stream, forest lands, the planned city of Harish, and the village Um el-Qutuf on the west.”
Mitzpeh Ilan was originally initiated by an organization called Ohr National Missions. It was founded several years ago by a group of young idealists from central Israel, with the goal of promoting Jewish settlement and development in the peripheral areas of the Land of Israel, particularly in the Negev and the Galilee. Among its successes was the rescue of a failing agricultural kibbutz of the secular Kibbutz Movement named Retamim and its re-population with 30 religious-Zionist families. It has also been instrumental in forming the new communities of Sansana, Merchav Am, Be'er Milka, Giv'ot Bar, and Haruv. It has facilitated 22 core-groups.
The spiritual leader of Mitzpeh Ilan is Rabbi Sinai Levy, a Haifa native who studied in Yeshivat Har Etzion.